shadythedevil

The warning said "please stop it now. take a breath. come back tomorrow." stop what? stop responding to people responding to me? wtf kinda policy is that? if i was on the opposite end of the spectrum here, aka brp fan boi, I would not have gotten that warning. did anybody else get any warnings? i am literally the only person defending my position against an entire forum. to me, it seems like some favoritism. i do not abide. furthermore, i know that telling people to take a breath usually has the exact opposite reaction. how about you gtfo your dumb ass high horse, warning people that are not apart of the nerd-think BRP monolith. ban me.

so before you warned me, for I am not sure why, there was a half hour between the last post that shows here and your response to me. in that time, i had made at least 3 other posts. can those posts be recovered? if not, i am done done here. that is the second time i was allowed to go through all of the motions of posting and when I refreshed the page I had discovered all of my time was wasted. not sure what exactly is going on with all that. before the warning, the response text box let me respond to multiple posts. after the warning i could not reply. but there are a bunch of posts that I made that are not showing up. that is really frustrating.

thank you for understanding lol

sure. i knew my players were well outside of the typical many many years ago when they ended a campaign in an instant. back when 5e first came out, the first adventure was hoard of the dragon queen and we played that. during the course of the adventure, they are given a flying castle. they knew of the showdown at the well of dragons and huddled. they flew their dragon castle over there and said "we fly the castle miles into the sky, cast teleport on ourselves to a place far far away and let the castle drop." the entire region was destroyed, including all good and bad dragons. essentially, they caused an extinction level event on par with chicxulub. i started giving them only deadly encounters when 4 of them as level 3 wandered into an illithid layer accidentally and decimated it. first, they ran out of the passage the came in, with henchmen chasing. they cast grease and the first wave mostly slip and fall, easily picked off. the illithid becomes aware, tells his henchmen to hide and wait throughout the cave system. the players wait and when nobody is coming through the check point, they send in bait scouts. various measures are taken and put in place so that the scout/ bait can get out without dying, leading chasing monsters into characters with actions prepped. henchmen are goblins, humans, bugbears, intellect devourers. the illithid see's how things are going and tells remaining henchmen to stay and protect him in his immediate vicinity. players reach the last room. illithid sends henchmen. players cast grease. focus fire illithid. pick off remaning henchmen slipping about. the first wave of henchmen was cr 4. second waves, cr 5 and 6. boss battle was cr 10. some players nearly died. it was fun. i expected a TPK. since then, 0 hp has been dead. all encounters are geared towards many many levels above where the players are at. i havent actually played d&d with them since curse of strahd. that was like.. 5 or 6 years ago now?

wooosh

its true, my attitude will not be adjusted until the system at hand has a developed methodology towards understanding that i have very limited time to prep. i also find it quite funny that my argument is responded with sentiments of "its been the same for 40 years and we dont change either." take an outside perspective. saying that about pretty much anything in life is probably going to be laughably wrong. i was hoping for responses like "you should take their chances to hit and average it, and assign a number for competency ranges to hit such as 0 for 0 - 30%, 2 for 31 - 65% and 4 for 66 - 100%. then doing the same for armor, if any armor reduces damage beyond the halfway point of typical damage, such as armor 3 vs d6 dmg, they will be given 1 point for each leading up to halfway, and then 2 points for each past halfway, so that armor 5 vs d6 dmg would be given 7 points which would be added chances to hit. then you would do the same to hp, with any monster having hp more than the average damage each character can do in a round. for example, if you have 4 characters that all do d6 dmg/ round and 3 dmg on average, if focus firing on a monster, monsters with more than 12hp will be given extra difficulty points. for each round of combat that a monster could survive past average damage, they will be given 1 extra difficulty point. a monster with an average to hit of 50%, 4 armor and 18 hp, vs a group of characters with about 12dmg per round on average, will have a difficult point value of 8" basically, a way to sum the stats up so they can be easily compared. also, i know how i am going to be balancing my non human races. so that doesnt need to be discussed anymore.

if you took it that way, thats on you lol. i love my group of players are they are largely peers in the industry. the point of saying that was to illustrate that my players are smart. a lot of comments being made come from the assumption that players are dumb or that GM's dont know how to build an encounter with appropriate environmental equaling factors and what not. again, weird you took it that way. i dont know any of you personally and i dont really care what any of you do. if you have a ton of time to do prep work, thats great. i used to have a ton of time while in school or when i was a kid. i currently work full time inpatient and outpatient. almost all of my prepping is done between patients. im currently between patient calls. spending the time to get to know the system and blah blah blah is really not feasible, for me. im sorry i really dont have very much empathy or compassion for people i dont really know, but i think you missed the point and really took a mistaken point personally lol. its not personal my guy. people have their lives. good for them. im not really trying to know them like that unless i know them like that. i know WAY too many people like that. thousands. i really dont care about anybody elses time. use it how you want. my point in coming here was recognizing that other systems have clearly made an effort to consider the time spent prepping, which would allude to understanding that we all have a variable amount of time to spend on the hobby with an additional assumption that as adults, we have careers that support the hobby as well as an entire whole other life of shit going on. i also feel a bit disheartened. my expectations were initially very low, because i literally read through the history of people making this argument. then my hopes were raised a bit as the discussion continued. and then they really hit the floor when i realized all of the conversation i was being engaged in was in the vein of getting me to adjust, rather than making the system adjust. thats a silly mission you all gave yourselves and i do think its funny. it was futile. i was looking for the answers i am looking for, not tangential imply i suck at the game, d&d is lame, etc. etc.

i already quoted you previously admitting that one takes longer than the other. it wastes my time lol. i dont care about your time. its always been my own time i was concerned about lol. 'l2p' comments are time wasting, as is the suggestion. not having a summary stat is time wasting. frequent tpk's are time wasting.

minimally? when your players are skilled enough, all of that melts away to be honest. it serves the purpose of being a very rough outline of what can be typically expected. a variable baseline. and in doing so, allows me to not waste time on many fronts. anything less than cr 3 is for newbs of the system. cr 4 - 9 is beginning levels for my players. cr 10 - 18 is mid levels for my players. cr 19 - 30 is end game challenge for my players. straight up nonsense.

To choose whether or not a particular creature is suitable for the campaign as a player character, the GM should ask three questions: M Is a player character version of this creature inappropriate for the campaign setting? M Will this creature cause difficulties for other players or the course of the campaign? M Will this creature unbalance the rest of the campaign? THATS VERBATIM FROM THE BOOK dude, do you even have the book? when is the last time you read it?

youre a cool dude. i do have something that I could share, but i am rather reluctant to do that here. i am reluctant, because it will be picked apart. there is probably a lot wrong with it. ive also not play tested with it, as i am still keying hexes for my hexcrawl. im probably a few months away from being in a playable state. if you really REALLY wanna see this funky flexible table ive got in its current state, i could share it with you on discord. also, when i first had asked the question about additional races for players that are fair, i had not read through the book cover to cover. as i am putzing around, reading sections of the new BRP book here and there, I came across a section that i skipped or that i entirely forgot. it says this verbatim in the newer BRP book. "Some skills may be commonly taught and used within this culture as a part of socialization and common education. At your gamemaster’s discretion, these skills might gain a small bonus. If bonuses to skills are used, it is recommended that every culture gain equal bonuses, though to a different set of skills." that is pretty much what i was asking, but i was asking as it related to the characteristic stats. so i have decided to keep all playable race characteristics within a 3d6. if a particular race is really adept in a certain characteristic, they will get 12 + d6. if a particular race is greatly lacking in a particular characteristic, they get 3 + d6. so basically keeping it equal, but giving some max rolls or min rolls here and there. this is the part of the book that i do not think is very helpful... "To choose whether or not a particular creature is suitable for the campaign as a player character, the GM should ask three questions: M Is a player character version of this creature inappropriate for the campaign setting? M Will this creature cause difficulties for other players or the course of the campaign? M Will this creature unbalance the rest of the campaign?" that last question really needed to be expanded upon and to save time for adults with careers, a cr-like stat should have been included. i find it pretty funny tho that i have been yelled at repeatedly about balance and yet, there it is, right in the book like... balance is actually considered in the game. lmfao.

hey well thanks for answering in the spirit of the question i was asking. this is pretty much what i am doing. ive explained in previous posts i have a wonky table of sorts to help figure out how exactly a monster compares to a group of players. i weighted armor and hp the heaviest, then i turned chance to hit and dmg into potential dmg per round. i have a few other factors that also go in but which are weighted much less than those two stats.

i do find it hilarious. im just trying to save time and have fair choices for starting races. its hilarious that this notion 'does not compute' with the community, lol. its frankly weird as hell lol. and as i mentioned in my original post, i had an inkling for the type of response i would get. a lot of people telling me how to DM and saying its not a system for me, blah blah blah. some have been helpful. its mostly been a discussion about how people are stuck in their ways, unfortunately. i will say it again. saving time is important for me as an adult and as the system stands, it wastes a lot of time and plenty of time saving features could be added without inherently changing the game. that is all.

yeah thanks and BRP is unevolved because it doesnt have any of that. when i was a kid maybe i could have spent the time you are all so dedicated to insist that i do as well. no lol, i dont have the time, im not a kid anymore. it is a HUGE flaw in the system, that the creators of the system and the community that supports the system to never change, wastes my time all over the place. and thanks for cherry picking around what i was saying. a lot of your questions are literally in the same exact sentence that you cherry picked from lol. i will say it again. adding these time saving features to the game does not inherently change the quality of what the game is. everything else has stayed the same. an additional stat on top of everything else does not change the game. it is literally stubbornness that prevents you for seeing something so simply. if the system was designed with a thought about adults managing time in the latest rerelease, it would have included time saving stats and tables. it doesnt. flaw, not a feature. its like you were handed a dull pencil as the first writing utensil in your life and you cant fathom that there are more options. you can sharpen that pencil. it works better. its still a pencil.

🙄🙄🙄 i know i said balance, but it was really about time management. it was also about fairness. all of this is extra shit that doesnt need to be said. i know how to run a game. as a square one when session prepping, i believe everybody is doing stat comparisons to some degree, including myself. whether you go line by line, have a feeling for the system, or read a singular stat; it doesnt matter to what i am saying here. its my own opinion that this particular system takes more time comparing stats than other systems (and its highly unlikely anybody here would convince me otherwise. i have quantitative data lol). its also my opinion that this issue can easily be fixed without changing a single thing about the original system. furthermore, its also of my opinion that the community keeps the rules unevolved and non progressive. its a problem that things havent changed much in 40 years, the rules and the community (also an opinion that is very unlikely to change). as a square one when players are rolling characters and picking races, they should be picking from equal options for the sake of fairness and for the sake of being interesting. i understand that this is balance adjacent, but its not the exact issue i am talking about. it needs to be fair for many reasons, mostly that there is more than one player at the table and stealing the show detracts from the experience of others. it also needs to be fair because if one race is clearly more powerful or weaker than others, youll end up with groups of all one race and groups that never have the latter race, which is boring. im not looking for any other advice other than time saving when session prepping and comparing stats and ensuring that players have racial choices on par with each other when they pick them.